Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

As the cost of living continues to increase over time, many Americans are placing greater scrutiny on the financial choices they make. An area for such evaluation is if the outcomes of going to college continue to be worth the cost. One underrepresented group, first-generation college students (FGCS), is less likely than non-FGCS to attend and…

The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to…

Students' school belonging is critical to overall functioning. Most past studies of school belonging's antecedents focused on individual-level and proximal environmental factors, neglecting broader socioecological factors such as income inequality. Hence, this study examined whether income inequality is associated with students' school belonging.…

Teaching assistants are a common presence in pre-kindergarten programs, but their role and the dynamics between lead teachers and their assistants are understudied. The classroom behaviors of lead teachers and assistants from 80 public prekindergarten classrooms were examined for similarities and differences in their roles and to determine how…

The question of why postsecondary institutions produce different labor market outcomes is difficult to answer due to unobserved student characteristics. Here, I leverage students' geographic proximity to three classifications of postsecondary institutions -- earnings-enhancing, competitive, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).…

The dual labor market theory (DLM) posited the existence of two distinct labor markets working in parallel. A primary one is a place where high wages, employment stability and high opportunities for advancement are the norms. On the other hand, low wages, arbitrariness and less desirable working conditions determine a secondary market. The main…

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition (BOD) is a popular method for studying the contributions of explanatory factors to social inequality. The results have often been given causal interpretations. While recent work and this article both show that some types of BOD are equivalent to a counterfactual-based treatment effect/selection bias decomposition,…

Positional competition in the labour market entails graduate opportunities that depend not only on graduates' skills, experience and abilities, but also on how their educational credentials compare to those of others. In this study, we examined the positional competition in the Finnish labour market and compared the influence of different 'degree…

Previous research has shown that female doctoral graduates earn less than male doctoral graduates; however, there has been little research on the determinants of this gender pay gap. This paper investigates the determinants of the gender pay gap among doctoral graduates in Germany. By relying on human capital theory, traditional gender roles and…